XUI 3.1 Released, allowing automated RIA generation
XUI 3.1 is available now. This release allows users to work directly with Hibernate, POJOs or Database schemas to automatically generate applications. We would like to thank everyone who contributed to the development and testing of this new release - your feedback was invaluable. You can download XUI 3.1 now from sourceforge at http://www.sf.net/projects/xui
Download XUI 3.1 now and evaluate the XUI Pro plug-in for free until the end of the year.
Eclipse plugin progess
The demand for this plugin has been significant and as a result we are getting great contributions from
the community. The Eclipse plugin now replicates all of the XUI basic features that are available in the
NetBeans plugin and the remaining XUI Pro features will be available in Eclipse very soon. A beta version of
the Eclipse XuiPro plugin is now available, see the downloads page for more details.
For more information on this release go to the XUI Wiki at
http://www.xoetrope.com/wiki/Eclipse and
http://www.xoetrope.com/wiki/EclipsePlugin.
Some tutorials on the use of the editor can be found at
http://www.xoetrope.com/xui/tutorials/editorintro/introduction
Hibernate integration
As capabilities of the for XUI editors improve, so too does the ability to automate tasks. A great example of this is
the XUI-Hibernate integration where you can leverage the power of the NetBeans environment to generate applications and easily
drag and drop POJO bindings on to XUI components. To see a demonstration of this functionality visit
http://www.xoetrope.com/resources/xui/video/Bindings/bindings.html
A XUI implementation of Hibernate's Caveat Emptor example can be run from
http://www.xoetrope.com/resources/xui/demos/webstart/CaveatEmptor/start.php,
and full source for this example can be found in the XUI svn repository
Dynamic form generation
Even more development time can be saved by dynamically generating XUI pages from your applications's databases.
For more on this have a look at the demo video at
http://www.xoetrope.com/resources/xui/video/XUI Forms/XUI Forms.html
It's a simple matter of drag and drop: widgets and bindings are created for you - run the application
and there's your data.
What's coming up
Version 3.2 is being finalized right now and is scheduled for release in December. The release will add support
for NetBeans 6.0 and will also see more of the functionality ported to the Eclipse XuiPro plug-in.
The roadmap for version 4.0 is outlined on our wiki at
http://www.xoetrope.com/xui/articles/roadmap
The XUI framework from its inception has been used to create UIs for many different systems and
legacy applications and XUI 4.0 will see much of this technology brought into the main project
along with editor support. New tools under prototype include support for Visual Basic and Oracle
Forms migration and we are currently seeking partners to help trial these tools. So if you have
any interest in seeing this type of work evolve and trying it out for yourself please let us know.
Join the community
The XUI project is on the look out for people who want to make contributions, comments, recommendations or
to try out new features. In advance of version 4.0, it's a great time to get involved. So if you use XUI why
not have a say in it's development. Start with the feature requests on sourceforge to see if there's
anything you'd like to see implemented
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=76693&atid=547960.
Techtip - Using Annotations with XUI
If you use Java 5 and later you can take advantage of some annotations to save on coding. The annotations
replicate features that can be coded directly in early versions of Java, so you are not missing out on any
features if you cannot use Java 5 in this context. The annotations are as follows:
Annotation Role
@Find
The find annotation performs the same function as the findComponent method, except that no typecasting is needed. An example of this is as follows:
@Find XButton myButton;
This annotation finds the reference to an XButton instance with the name ‘myButton’.
@Bind( path )
Like the find method above this annotation adds a binding to the specified path to the annotated component.
@Validate( rule )
The Validate annotation associates the specified validation rule with the annotated component.
@Event( method=, type= )
The Event annotation adds an event handler to the annotated component of the specified type. The response method is specified by the method argument.
The annotations are probably of most use to the Java programmer, but the @Find
annotation can save a significant amount of boiler plate code for all users, thereby making the code more
readable.
In XUI 2.x you had to follow a number of steps to add a component reference
public class
{
private XButton myButton;
...
public void pageCreated()
{
myButton = (XButton)findComponent( "myButton" );
...
}
repeated over many components thos could become tedious and the typecase may also have been an
issue if ever the component type changed as the type had to be changed in more than one place.
Now in XUI 3.x you can use annotations so that the above code becomes:
public class
{
@Find private XButton myButton;
...
There's no need for the pageCreated method (unless you were carrying out
other initialization within the method).
The annotations require that you include the appropriate classes from the
net.xoetrope.optional.annotation package. See your IDE’s documentation for
inserting and optimizing imports. (In NetBeans press ALT+SHIFT+F to find the
necessary imports, or on NetBeans/Eclipse click on the light bulb in the gutter to add the necessary imports). The
annotations will work with both public and private members and also members of the page's superclass.
Please see the XUI user guide for more information, and as mentioned in the XUI roadmap XUI 4.0 will
further extend the use of annonations.
XUI is hosted on SourceForge at
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xui where this
latest release can be downloaded for free. More information on XUI can be found on the Xoetrope website at
http://www.xoetrope.com/xui.
